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By admin, March 21, 2011 12:42 pm

After several months of testing with real world loading, I would say the most optimized way to utilize your SAN storage is to enable Thin Provisioning at BOTH the Storage and Host.

• By enabling Thin Provisioning on Equallogic, you will be able to create more volumes (or luns) for the connecting ESX hosts to use as VMFS or RDM space for the connecting VMs.
• By enabling Thin Provisioning on ESX host, actually this is on VMFS to be exact, you will significantly gain VMFS space utilization and put more VMs on it, I was able to get at least 40 to 100% space saving on some of VMFS. It’s definitely great for service providers who always want to put those under-utilized VMs and group them together using Thin Provisioning.

One thing you need to constantly check is space will not grow over to 100%, you can do this by  enable vCenter Alarm on space utilization and stay alerted, I’ve encountered one time that a VM suddenly went crazy and ate all the space it allocated, thus tops VMFS threshold as well as Equallogic threshold at the same time. 

This is the only down side you need to consider, but the trade off is minimum considering the benefit you get when using Thin Provisioning at BOTH Equallogic and ESX Level.

Of course, you should not put a VM that constantly need more space over the time into the same thin provisioned volume with others.

Finally, not to mention it’s been proved by VMware that the performance penalty for using Thin Provisioning is almost none (ie, identical to thick format) and it’s amazing using VMFS is even faster than RDM in many cases, but that’s really another topic “Should I or Should I NOT use RDM”.

* Note: One very interesting point I found that is when enabling Thin Provisioning on storage side, but use Thick format for VM, guess what? The storage utilization ONLY shows what’s actually used within that VM, ie, if the thick format VM is 20GB, but only 10GB is actually used, then on thin provisioned storage side, it will show ONLY 10GB is allocated, not 20GB.

This is simply fantastic and intelligent! However, this still doesn’t help to over allocate the VMFS space, so you will still need to enable Thin Provisioning in each individual VM.

Sometimes, you may want to convert the original Thick to Thin by using vMotion the Datastore, another great tool without any downtime, especially if your storage support VAAI, then this conversion process only takes a few minutes to complete.

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By admin, March 20, 2011 9:28 pm

沒新車模出的日子﹐繼續搜索停車場的寶貝們。

今天迎來的是一堆英倫經典中的經典﹐車主們的品位看來和他們在這個曾經是英國殖民地接受的教育有關﹐應該都是那些很懂得經典車歷史和文化的精英。

Rolls-Royce Corniche﹐The Corniche was named “Silver Shadow Mulliner Park Ward two door fixed head coupé ” (alternatively – drop head coupé ) before 1971 when the Corniche name was applied. 想不到40年後竟然還有人經常開這70年代的勞斯萊斯出現在香港的道路上﹐迎來的一定是很多讚賞的目光﹐車主絕對是“識貨”之人士也﹗

Rolls-Royce Silver Spur﹐八十年代出生的它經歷了香港最輝煌的那段歷史﹐當年殖民地時代的半島酒店就曾經採購了12台Silver Spur﹐車和司機們一字排開﹐那才叫做威風。

Jaguar XK8﹐典雅的車身每天都是那麼光潔﹐乾淨的令人驚訝﹐前車窗整齊排列著一系列的迷你版香水﹐車主應該是個很有氣質的淑女﹐而且她自己配置了個原廠的捷豹標誌(原XK8沒有的配件)﹐網上查了查﹐原來當年的XK8和Aston Martin的DB7是共用同一引擎和很多零件的。

Rolls-Royce Corniche

Rolls-Royce Silver Spur

Jaguar XK8

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By admin, March 19, 2011 6:14 pm

看來那個伯伯鄰居終于闊出去了﹐可能每天進出停車場都會看到那台火紅色的F458刺激得連他也忍不住購入心目中的Dream Car﹐雖然這是輛05年的二手賓利GT﹐但這車怎麼都比那“科幻怪物”強多了﹐渾身上下的英倫氣派表露無疑﹐真好看﹗想著想著﹐我也開始心動了﹐唉﹐無奈身邊什麼都不太缺﹐就是缺$$$。

另外最近還發現鄰居有台咆哮震天的六七十年代美國肌肉車經常出現﹐可能是Dodge Charger或者是Challenger ﹐美國大汽缸引擎的咆哮聲的確來到與眾不同﹐完全可以稱之為十分悅耳好聽﹗那誇張寬闊的車身幾乎把整條馬路都給霸佔了﹐想不到連這麼冷門的美國車都又人玩﹐還真實實在在地開在了香港的高速公路上﹐真利害﹗看來車主一定是在美國生活了好一陣子﹐完全感染了當地的文化和汽車的精髓﹗

Update:

Wow! I finaly saw it today, it’s a 1970 Chevelle, the sound of the engine is so unique, so it’s been CONFIRMED!

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By admin, March 16, 2011 10:24 pm

今天看到的一段新聞﹐這樣的事情看來只會在中國大陸發生﹐可憐的小牛Gallardo和中國人。看見沒有﹐拿著傢伙的工人砸著的時候竟帶有詭異的笑容﹐令我不寒而慄﹐難道中國人真的有根深蒂固的“小農”基因﹖I am not sure what Jeremy of Top Gear would say if he ever came across this news.

据车主介绍，2010年11月29日，这辆购入不久的跑车，就在青岛出现了发动机不打火的故障。车主与该公司青岛销售店联系后，车由青岛销售店委托的维修服务商安排的拖车运至指定的维修店。没想到的是，运至维修店后，不但发动机故障没有得到解决，车辆保险杠和底盘也受损断裂。

经多次维权仍不能圆满解决，车主决定砸毁这辆兰博基尼。昨日下午3：15，在青岛一灯具城门口，车主雇人将这辆价值300万的兰博基尼盖拉多跑车，砸得面目全非。

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By admin, March 15, 2011 5:43 pm

今天是我在香港討論區網球版的兩週年紀念。

在過去的兩年裡﹐跟超過120位朋友切磋過﹐他們幾乎都有自己的秘技和不同的打法﹐從他們的身上我學到了很多寶貴的經驗如冷靜的頭腦﹑完善的計劃﹑堅人的毅力﹑爆炸的力量等﹐這都使我本身的技術比兩年前有明顯的提昇﹐謝謝你們的參與令到每次的球聚都令人留連忘返。

希望今後的日子有更多的朋友和我一齊來享受Happy Tennis。

Some interesting statistics:

Courts Booked: ~180場
Tennis Balls: 60罐
Restring: 4次

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By admin, March 13, 2011 9:46 pm

After watching the demo of VMware vCenter Operations, I would say it’s just another monitoring and diagnostic tool besides the leading two: vfoglight from Vizioncore and Veeam Monitor from Veeam, nothing really special, but it does present the trouble ones in an intuitive way by using color icons.

Personally, I found Veeam Monitor Free Edition is already more than enough to identify the problem and find out where the latency is, the key is to look at the lowest or deepest layer, in other words, into VM itself, as the problematic VM is the most fundamental element causing the contention on Resorucs pool, ESX Host, vCenter, etc.

Then I ask myself why would VMware release such product while there are already two great products in the market? Well, I will leave this question to you in the comment.

Update Apr 5

I’ve tried the Free Xangati for ESX and don’t like it, it’s not as intuitive as Veeam Monitor.

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By admin, March 9, 2011 10:29 pm

Originally I thought we are going to have a small footprint and easy managed software finally arrived from Dell, but I was wrong totally.

After spending hours and hours of trying to install DMC 2.0 on Physical and VM, both failed multiple times, I finally gave up. It was a buggy software and not to mention the size of it (over 1GB) and the bunch of crap modules it’s trying to load to your server (there are more than 80 stages during the installation).

I would strongly recommend everyone with a common sense to avoid using this product even it’s free of charge. Simply because it’s way over complicated and the pre-requirement can make anyone big headache, took over 1 hour to install on latest hardware server and finally failed during installation!

I would rather use PRTG as the tool for my monitoring purpose and I was hoping DMC can do me only one thing (hardware failure alert), now I will skip it forever and never look back, I will depend on vCenter’s hardware monitoring and iDRAC’s alert to help me to achieve the same goal.

Bye Bye DMC 2.0, the crappiest software I’ve ever encountered since MS Commerce Server back then.

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By admin, March 8, 2011 8:28 pm

What a nice looking 1960s car from Alfa Romeo! Coming soon from Autoart!

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By admin, March 5, 2011 5:15 pm

It’s a common question: “Are there any BIOS settings Dell recommends for VMware ESX/vSphere?” Primarily, Dell recommends reading and following VMware’s best practices. The latest revision (as of this posting) can be found in their article “Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere™ 4.1”. Here are a list of additional points of interest specifically regarding Dell PowerEdge servers:

• Hardware-Assisted Virtualization: As the VMware best practices state, this technology provides hardware-assisted CPU and MMU virtualization.
  In the Dell PowerEdge BIOS, this is known as “Virtualization Technology” under the “Processor Settings” screen. Depending upon server model, this may be Disabled by default. In order to utilize these technologies, Dell recommends setting this to Enabled.
• Intel® Turbo Boost Technology and Hyper-Threading Technology: These technologies, known as “Turbo Mode” and “Logical Processor” respectively in the Dell BIOS under the “Processor Settings” screen, are recommended by VMware to be Enabled for applicable processors; this is the Dell factory default setting.
• Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA): VMware states that in most cases, disabling “Node Interleaving” (which enables NUMA) provides the best performance, as the VMware kernel scheduler is NUMA-aware and optimizes memory accesses to the processor it belongs to. This is the Dell factory default.
• Power Management: VMware states “For the highest performance, potentially at the expense of higher power consumption, set any BIOS power-saving options to high-performance mode.” In the Dell BIOS, this is accomplished by setting “Power Management” to Maximum Performance.
• Integrated Devices: VMware states “Disable from within the BIOS any unneeded devices, such as serial and USB ports.” These devices can be turned off under the “Integrated Devices” screen within the Dell BIOS.
• C1E: VMware recommends disabling the C1E halt state for multi-threaded, I/O latency sensitive workloads. This option is Enabled by default, and may be set to Disabled under the “Processor Settings” screen of the Dell BIOS. (I will keep the default to Enabled as I want to save more power in my data center and be enviornmental friendly)
• Processor Prefetchers: Certain processor architectures may have additional options under the “Processor Settings” screen, such as Hardware Prefetcher, Adjacent Cache Line Prefetch, DCU Streamer Prefetcher, Data Reuse, DRAM Prefetcher, etc. The default settings for these options is Enabled, and in general, Dell does not recommend disabling them, as they typically improve performance. However, for very random, memory-intensive workloads, you can try disabling these settings to evaluate whether that may increase performance of your virtualized workloads.

Finally, in order to take the advantage of ESX 4.1 Power Management feature in vCenter to show up, you need to change the setting in BIOS Power Management to “OS Control”.

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By admin, March 4, 2011 10:18 am

今天在MC論壇看到ENZOBOY寫的﹐分析得還真不錯。

就如最近大家都提到的關于zonda r的螺絲問提，以及最近伯陵近乎偏執得對照真車每個細節改他的ky enzo讓我突然想到，模型的細節到底該怎么看待﹕

現在模型厂商的工藝越來越好，模型的細節就越來越多，當然收藏者對模型的細節追求也更孜孜不倦，模型的鉚釘，線管，拆卸功能和零件數量的增加，尤其在老車上更加明顯的體現，大家都在追求cmc exoto的精度，后者更是想讓模型真正成為小比例汽車，不少厂家如aa也在提高自己的工藝，從量產版的veyron 到mclaren f1 和zonda r 的推出，讓人看到aa向cmc靠近的步伐。

但是在瘋狂追求細節的同時，我冷靜下來拿著自己的為數不多的能稱為結构派的模型和真車作起了對比，其實很多細節當初另我看的欣喜甚至激動，但是在和照片的對比下發現 有些更本就是模型商為了迎合顧客而夸大的細節，很多線，鉚釘之類的零件在縮小了12倍甚至18倍的情況下，如果不是故意看應該是不會注意到的，但是在很多模型上卻是能夠成為吸引人的地方，這有時使自己這個細節追求者感到矛盾，一方面我是喜歡這些細節的，一方面他們可能又是錯誤的。

其實很多模型在制作過程中也因為工藝問題在細節作了妥協，由于真車和人的比例關系，很多鉸鏈和固定方式根本就無法在模型上體現，這也就是為什么出現了狗腿，和龜車。畢竟比例模型不能把車體材料厚度和車窗厚度以及油漆厚度都那樣縮小，很多真車可行的打開方式和打開角度放到模型上就會出問題。

有時想想模型也該肩負，不能無畏的增加零件數，一些不必要的零件和管線省略可能更好。過分突出的細節會另車看上去更臃腫，在視覺感受上反而和真車背道而馳。

舉些比例過大 或者 厂家由于工藝放棄的一些例子﹕

1. pagani zonda r 這個例子大家都知道，懸挂和尾翼上的過分大的鉚釘降低了這款車的整體分數，如果尾翼是固定的 只是做出几個鉚釘的型 懸挂的螺釘用其他方式做，模型离真車的感覺更靠近。
2. cmc 和 exoto的 156 f1 這款車是這兩個品牌中數一數2工藝的模型，但是仔細看 剎車卡鉗上的剎車銅線，放大18倍就是過分的大了，exoto則為了體現細節 把一些零件做的過分大了 導致為了容下并體現這些零件 而把有些零件和車架部分做得夸大。
3. gmp Ferrari p4 這款車很漂亮 但是車子尾部和周身的鉚釘顯然是比真車更大了，還有由于材料問題導致的，過粗的剎車導管，使車的轉向變的艱難。
4. bbr ky 的法拉利系列，不論是f430 f458（試作開門版）還是bbr 的enzo 引擎蓋打開后前沿都是高于車頂的，其實也就是傳統說的狗腿，只是外形經過處理，更好看些，由于法拉利的車尾鉸鏈采用的類似家里們框鉸鏈，所以真車裝嵌時需要打開時在內部固定，因此bbr只得采用狗腿方式。
5. tamiya / kyosho 1/12 enzo 同樣是和bbr一樣的鉸鏈問題，法拉利的鉸鏈方式導致了 ky在把bbr的模型放大后依然采用類狗腿方式，導致影響門的開合。而同樣的問題 tamiya似乎用了更聰明 但也是更冒險的方式，他自己制作出一個鏈接方式，引擎蓋可以以和真車几乎相同的方式打開，但是因為材料厚度限制的原因，雖然勉強做到了和真車一致，但是打開到極限并用撐杆撐起后，其實門是被彎曲的，所以后來很多玩家表示引擎蓋變形嚴重。
6. aa ky bbr tamiya 等一些模型的開閉机關 很多中高端模型會為了將模型的一些可動部件做出來，在底盤出設置一個按鈕，但是很多時候就因為這些按鈕讓模型感覺更差。bbr 的 f430 enzo ,ky的r8 f40 ,aa的cgt 以及tamiya 門內側多余的圓柱型部件，每次拍照都覺得相當礙眼。